SUMMARY
Sonic evaluated more than 3000 deals during the course of the assessment
19 early-stage startups raised close to $2 Mn as part of the Sonic initiative
The programme kicked off in July last year and will provide mentorship and scale up support for the founders
Venture capital firm, Chiratae Ventures has announced the names of 19 startups that it had invested in as part of its maiden seed investment initiative, Sonic.
During the course of the assessment, Sonic evaluated more than 3000 deals across a slew of stages and sectors. These startups raised close to $2 Mn as part of the Sonic initiative. .
The selected startups ranged from a slew of sectors ranging from consumer tech, SaaS, deeptech and healthtech.
19 names have been announced while two other startups continue to remain in, what the firm calls, ‘stealth-mode.’ One of these ‘stealth’ startups comes from the B2B sector while the other one belongs to the mobility deeptech segment.
The accelerator kicked off in July of 2021. As part of the programme, the startups will be mentored by industry veterans and investors, along with scale up support for their next stage of growth.
Commenting on the success of the first edition of Sonic, Chiratae chairman and founder, Sudhir Sethi, said, “Chiratae Sonic, our seed program has facilitated entrepreneurs to build stellar companies in India and abroad. Under our seed program Chiratae Sonic, last year we backed 19 startups. With eight unicorns in our portfolio, we are more than ever driven to support and back tech startups solving for India.”
The VC firm is likely to launch the second edition of the Sonic initiative this year itself.
Meet the Indian Startups That Made It to Sonic 01
Founders: Ashwani Agrawal and Abrar Ahmed,
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2018
Aura Smart is an Internet of Things (IoT)-based startup that provides intelligent home solutions. Its products allow users to control and monitor their smart devices via a mobile app. The startup currently targets residential and commercial property markets.
Founders: Hemir Doshi and Abhishek Saraf
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2020
BeepKart is an online retailer of pre-owned two-wheelers. The startup claims to have addressed trust issues regarding used vehicle sales with in-house quality checks. It also provides a host of services, including sale of spare parts and accessories, arranging for auto loans and two-wheeler insurance and after-sales service.
Founders: Aman Satija and Sriram Krishnamoorthy
Headquarters: Gurgaon and Bengaluru
Founded In: 2021
BuyStars is a player card trading platform based on real money. The users can buy, sell, trade and even manage a virtual team with digital player cards. The platform, which is still under construction, will focus on popular sports including cricket and football as well as other games such as Kabbadi.
Founders: Aditya Singhal and Nishant Sinha
Headquarters: India and U.S
Founded In: 2021
ByteLearn is an AI-powered teaching assistant startup that guides tutors and grades students independent of a physical teacher. For a teacher, ByteLearn claims to be saving 40% of his/her time, by assisting them in creating tests, quizzes, and homework on its platform. Currently, the startup only caters to mathematical concepts.
While the platform provides teachers actionable insights, it also helps students learn topics via its AI-backed tutoring engine.
Founders: Saurabh Gupta and Siddharth Swarnkar
Headquarters: Mumbai
Founded In: 2020
Tamasha is a social gaming platform that combines real money gaming space with live social engagement. The startup aims to build a gaming metaverse, where creators can engage users via live social games and monetise their engagement. Essentially, it aims to have influencers and content creators on its platform host games that will have cash prizes.
Founder: Pramit Bhargava
Headquarters: Gurugram
Founded In: 2018
Visioapps is an assistive tech startup that provides visual impairment solutions. Its products allow users to fully control their phone and apps with just voice commands. From sending texts on WhatsApp to booking a cab, all such tasks can be performed using voice commands using the app.
Founders: Saahil Dhaka and Neil Sarkar
Headquarters: U.S
Founded In: 2021
Clientell is an AI-powered business intelligence startup, that claims to help businesses take
data-backed decisions and streamline their business strategies. The no-code design platform has hundreds of inbuilt AI models that can be used by its clients to deliver predictions within minutes.
Founders: Srinivasan Narayan, Soumya Mohapatra, Abhijeet Sahoo, Alok Mishra and Ajay Srinath
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2020
Goodmeetings is an AI-enabled startup that leverages video and analytics to enable sales teams to sell effectively remotely. The startup offers its products in a range of sectors including insurance, real estate, and fintech firms. Its clients include indifi, Nestaway, Zolo among others.
Founders: Vikshut Mundkur and Arjun Janananda
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2016
HUVIAiR is a SaaS startup that provides management software for the real-estate sector. The startup deploys visual intelligence technology to enhance onsite productivity and reduce progress monitoring time.
Founders: Aditi Sinha and Rishabh Jain
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2019
Locale.ai is an AI-powered geoinformatics SaaS startup based out of Bengaluru. It provides products that enable its clients to measure fleet performance, user behaviour and business health on the ground. Add to that, it provides a centralised oversight for on-ground operations. Locale.ai works with a host of companies spread across Asia, Europe, Latin America, among others.
Founders: Sachin Chandra Bonagiri and Siddhardha Sukka
Headquarters: U.S
Founded In: 2021
NetBook is a machine learning infrastructure management startup that provides a unified platform to integrate all ML resources in one place for easy access and usage.
Founders: Rajat Aggarwal, Rohan Bhatial and Anoop Namboodiri
Headquarters: Hyderabad
Founded In: 2017
DreamVu is a deeptech startup that develops omnidirectional 3D vision systems. The startup also has an in-house visual imaging software that it leverages to unify human and machine vision. The camera platform could find application in a range of industries, including autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics.
Founders: Akshay Gugnani and Kanishk Shukla
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2020
Expertia is a deeptech SaaS platform that aims to help businesses easily identify top talents for their firms. The platform uses deep learning, natural language processing (NLP) to predict the right candidate. The startup claims to be 90% accurate at one-tenth the cost.
Founder: Kanav Singla, Prashant Sinha,and Shorya Mahajan
Headquarters: U.S
Founded In: 2017
Metadome is one of the early players in the augmented reality segment focussing on bringing life-like AR experiences to all smartphones. The startup is a metaverse that provides no-code infrastructure to creators and brands to build immersive experiences in the virtual world.
The startup was previously called Adloid but rebranded itself as Metadone in December last year.
Founders: Aman Rai, Anurag Dani, Rohit Patel and Amal Mechirackal
Headquarters: Bengaluru
Founded In: 2020
AroLeap is a fitness-focused startup that has developed an intelligent strength training device. The device reportedly delivers data-driven personal training to its users right from the comfort of their homes.
Founders: Khet Singh and Ajit Patel
Headquarters: Gurugram
Founded In: 2020
ClaimBuddy is an insurtech startup that works to streamline insurance claim processing by leveraging technology. The startup also partners with a slew of hospitals to evaluate insurance policies and smoothen coverage assistance.
Founders: Ankur Gigras, Vikas Chauhan and Aman Khanna
Headquarters: Gurugram
Founded In: 2021
The healthtech startup aims to build a network of hospitals across the country, bringing in digital solutions for better patient care throughout the hospitalisation cycle. The startup also provides a full-stack solution to surgery care.
